Finding Light in Life's Darkest Passages

Have you been through a difficult period recently — or are you in one right now?
So many people around me have been moving through hard seasons lately, myself included. These stretches can feel confronting, lonely and overwhelming. But they're something almost everyone faces at some point. No one is immune.

The good news: they pass. And more often than not, they're not simply periods of suffering — they're powerful stages of transformation.

An Old Idea for a Timeless Struggle

In the 16th century, the Spanish mystic St John of the Cross wrote The Dark Night of the Soul while imprisoned in solitary confinement. He described a journey in which the old, egoic identity begins to dissolve before a deeper union with the Divine — or our true nature — has fully emerged. It's the uncomfortable space between who we once believed ourselves to be and who we're becoming.

As the spiritual teacher Adyashanti put it: "Enlightenment is a destructive process. It's the crumbling away of untruth."

As old beliefs, identities, habits and emotional patterns fall away, we can feel lost, empty or uncertain. We start questioning everything — who we are, where our life is going. But this darkness isn't the end of the journey. It's a transition. You're leaving one level of consciousness and moving toward another — one with greater clarity, freedom and light. As St John of the Cross wrote: "The endurance of darkness is the preparation for great light."

Ways to Support Yourself Through It

Withdraw and look within. Pull back from unnecessary social commitments, technology and distractions. This is a time for inquiry, solitude and gentleness. Spend time in stillness —meditate, reflect, listen. Beneath the noise of the conditioned mind, there's a deeper intelligence guiding you.

Prioritise sleep.

Never underestimate the healing power of rest. Sleep helps the body and mind release stress, restore balance and process change. Rather than distracting yourself with latenights, alcohol, television or endless scrolling, let yourself slow down. Go to bed early, sleep in, nap when you need to.

Ground yourself in nature.

Walk barefoot on the earth.
Sit beneath a tree.
Lie on the grass.
Step away from artificial stimulation and reconnect with the simplicity of the natural world.
Nature reminds us that change, death and renewal are part of every cycle.

Nourish your body.

During difficult times, we're often drawn to sugar, alcohol, processed food or other quick fixes. But your body is moving through this transformation too. Support it with wholesome food, water, movement and the nutrients that help your nervous system stabilise and heal.

Seek wisdom.

Challenging periods can open us to deeper knowledge. Read books and teachings that reconnect you with truth and offer a wider perspective on what you're experiencing.

There's a Sanskrit phrase, yad bhavam tat bhavati —"what we think, we become."
What you focus on will shape how you move through this period.

Seek support.

You don't have to navigate this alone. Find someone who understands transformation and can support you without judgement — a coach, counsellor, mentor, teacher or guide who has walked a similar path. As the saying goes: "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

This Will Pass

Your dark night is not a punishment, a failure or a life sentence. It may be part of your journey toward a clearer, lighter, more authentic experience of life. Hold faith that something within you is being released, reorganised and renewed.

Beyond the darkness, there can be greater connection, love, clarity and freedom.

This is not the end. It is evolution.

In peace,
Sophie

The Loving Controller: Why Pushing the People We Love Never Works

One of the things that comes up again and again — and we've all done it — is watching someone we love resist something we can see would genuinely help them, and help the wider situation.

Why Do I Feel Like They Need to Do This?

That's always the first question worth asking. If we're honest, the answer usually lands somewhere between because I can see it would help them and because it would make things easier for me. Both are true. And that second one is worth staying with.

Not to judge yourself for it — it's very human. But when we're clear about our own stake in the outcome, we stop disguising our preference as wisdom.

Is This My Own Growth Edge?

The second thing worth looking at: is the thing I'm wanting them to do something I've fully embodied myself? Sometimes the strength of our desire for another person to change is pointing directly back at our own growth edge. Not always — but it's worth the honest check.

The Loving Controller

Then there's what we might call the loving controller. It sounds like: I love you, and I can see exactly what you need to do, and I just need you to do it. What it's actually saying, underneath, is: I can only be at peace if you make this choice. And that's the moment we've handed our peace over to someone else's timeline — which means we've contracted the very thing we were trying to create.

Worthy Inquiry

The Vedic tradition has a principle called worthy inquiry. Knowledge — and this includes advice, recommendations, practices, anything we might offer another — is given, and best received, when someone asks. Not before. When someone isn't asking, they're not ready. They may know the option exists. They may have heard you mention it more than once. The reason they're not taking it has nothing to do with you, and pushing doesn't move them closer — it usually just makes them dig in.

What Actually Works

What actually works is being the embodiment of the thing, quietly and consistently, over time. Not talking about it. Just doing it, and letting the results speak. That can take a long time. But love is space. And space means allowing someone the grace of their own path — their own timing, their own mistakes, the arc of their own learning.

When they're ready — when there's a genuine worthy inquiry, something like I'm struggling, I don't know what to do, what's worked for you? — that's when you speak into it. And because you didn't push, because you weren't waiting for your moment to be right, they'll be more likely to come to you, and to actually hear you, without resentment.

Your Busy Meditation Is Working: A Refresher on Why (and How) We Practise

If you learned to meditate a while ago, there’s a good chance you've had one of these thoughts lately: I'm doing it wrong. I'm not getting enough out of it. My meditations are still so busy. Or perhaps the practice has quietly slipped, and you're wondering how to get back on the seat.

Wherever you are, this is for you. Let's come back to the why first, then the how. 

Look back before you judge. 

When we've been meditating for a while, we normalise the benefits. Feeling more balanced and stable simply becomes "how I am", and the mind starts hyper-focusing on what we're not experiencing yet.

So try this. Dial your mind back to who you were before you learned, whether that was last month or ten years ago. That version of you was probably more stressed, carrying more thoughts, with less awareness of yourself. You may still feel stress now, and you still have thoughts. But has the baseline shifted? Do the small things that used to consume you make less noise? Are you more functional, even on the hard days?

That new baseline isn't perfection. You will still feel things, react, and be triggered at times. You're human, and we're here to feel. Meditation doesn't numb us out or make us blissful all the time. It gives us a steadier, clearer place to feel life from. If your system has been wired for anxiety over a lifetime, it can take time to come down, and sometimes meditation is one support among several. Realistic expectations are part of the practice.

Busy meditations mean stress release

The experience during meditation is not the outcome. Meditation is a deep rinse for the nervous system. Like a washing machine, sometimes the cycle runs fast, and that means lots of thinking.

When the body settles, it starts to release stress, and thinking is the main by-product of that release. So a busy meditation isn't a failed meditation. It's the practice doing exactly what it's there to do.

And we all keep collecting new stress. Every day brings conversations, news, demands and decisions. Unless you live with no incoming stress at all, there will be thoughts. If we stop releasing it, it builds and builds until we blow.

What happens in your practice mirrors what's going on in your body and life. Tired?
You'll drop deeper, because the body prioritises rest. 

Woken with a racing mind? Expect a busier meditation. Either way, the system is working through it.

Why twice a day, for 20 minutes? I know twice daily can sound like a lot, especially when you hear that five or ten minutes is "enough". It's better than nothing. But it's like drinking two glasses of water a day and wondering why you don't feel hydrated.

Meditating once a day mostly churns through incoming stress. Twice a day starts to chip away at the backlog. In our experience, and the experience of the many who have come before us dating back thousands of years, 20 minutes twice a day is the bare minimum for real progress: releasing old stress, expanding awareness, and actually feeling yourself change.

We live with more input than at any point in history. As more of our thinking gets outsourced to technology, cultivating our own clarity and creativity matters more, not less. As the saying commonly attributed to Einstein goes, problems can't be solved at the level of consciousness that created them.

The real fruits are subtle

One of the most important effects of meditation is a more expanded baseline awareness. Because it's subtle, it's easy to miss. Signs include:

● Noticing yourself more in the moment

● More clarity about your life and how you're showing up

● Seeing your own patterns, and the part you play in your problems

● Sensing what you actually need, including rest

That last one matters. Meditation isn't there to turn you into an always-on, ever-ready machine. It helps you detect the need of the time, which is often to stop pushing and let go. There's a time to activate and a time to rest. Most of us only do the first.

Getting back on the seat

Your mind will challenge your practice. Every meditator meets resistance, sometimes daily. Urgency culture and stress will tell you there's no time. Here's what helps:

● Don't make it a big deal. No grand restart. Meditate tonight. Close your eyes again tomorrow morning.

● Make a plan. Morning is usually easy: get up a little earlier. The afternoon meditation is the one that slips, so plan it day by day, somewhere between lunch and dinner. It doesn't have to be the same time daily.

● Make it non-negotiable. If you leave room to decide, your mind will find endless reasons not to. Treat it like other habits like brushing your teeth or taking a shower.

● Set your intention. The mind is the servant of intention. Decide you will meditate, and it becomes creative about when.

● When the excuses start, get your bum to the seat. Once you're meditating, the debate is over.

● Rest when you're tired. Instead of another coffee, meditate and top yourself up.

Then see what aligned action looks like from there. If you've had a break, expect busier meditations at first. Think of a shaken bottle of fizzy drink: when the cap comes off, the first flush of foam comes out. That's not a sign it's failing. Give it a couple of weeks before you assess anything. Just show up, twice a day, and let the outcome take care of itself.

People all around the world with young kids, full-time jobs and big leadership roles meditate twice a day, every day. You can be one of them.

A quick technique refresher

Over time, effort can creep back in. Here are the basics:

1. Start easy. Sit comfortably and let the mind be easy for about 30 seconds before introducing the mantra.

2. Think a faint idea of the mantra. This isn't a focus or concentration practice. No clear pronunciation, no rhythm.

3. Let it go when it slips. When you find you've forgotten the mantra, don't hold on. Let the thought take you.

4. Come back gently. When you notice you've been thinking, return lightly to the mantra. Time off the mantra is still meditation. It's your intention to think the mantra that makes it meditation.

5. Let it change. The mantra may get fainter, distort, speed up or become just a sensation. Faint is good. Don't correct it.

6. Take your time coming out. Rest with eyes closed for a couple of minutes before moving on.

I love the party analogy. You're at a party, and your best friend, the mantra, is there. So are thoughts, sounds, sensations and feelings. Everyone's welcome. You don't need to push anyone out by thinking the mantra harder. When you realise you've wandered off, you simply lightly favour your best friend again. If you ever notice you're pushing, drop the mantra for 15 to 20 seconds, then come back to it as effortlessly as you can.

Come back to community

If you've been out of touch for a while, it's easy to feel like a lone ranger, keeping your practice going while everyone around you pushes and optimises. That's why community matters. It reminds us why we started. You don't need to wait for the next refresher. If you have questions about your practice, reach out any time. And if you've been meditating for over a year, ask me about an advanced mantra.

Now, close your eyes.

A body feeling

Sometimes, even after years of meditating and other pratices to calm my nervous system, I still have bouts of anxiety and feel stressed and out of control. The other day I was sitting in Queenstown, the sun was shining, I was well rested, I had both my kids home, my husband was happily in the garden and life felt unhurried, however, I found myself experiencing my old patterns of anxiety and self doubt. I started to think why on earth am I training to be a teacher and meditating twice a day when I can’t even control my own emotions and thoughts.

After reflecting and listening to a podcast from an amazing teacher – Georgia Vavasour - what struck me was this: Meditation was, in fact, doing exactly what it was supposed to. I could feel. I could feel and name emotions moving through me and could sense where they lived in mybody. Rather than pushing my feelings away or becoming consumed by them, I could simply be aware of them. With that awareness came a sense of space and the opportunity to reflect rather than react.

As I stayed with the experience, I also began to see what was playing out beneath the surface. I realised two things. First, my nervous system still needs work and I still have a deeply ingrained want to be in control – but that this is starting to loosen.

Second, I realised I was trying to control my experience by shaping how I wanted things to unfold around me, rather than allowing life to be as it was and trusting that I could surrender to the natural flow of life instead of trying to force what is already unfolding. In fact, I found that in the moments that I did release control, there was often a wonderful experience to be found on the other side of it.

One of the greatest gifts meditation has given me is the ability to experience the full spectrum of being human. After years of being afraid of feeling anything that was less than pleasant, I learned to shift my perspective. We can have thoughts, feel emotions, notice the sensations in our bodies and, at the very same time, step back and witness it all unfolding with curiosity. We can recognise that these experiences don’t define who we are; they are simply experiences we are having as we move through the world as imperfect human beings.

Our thoughts, feelings, and emotions are real, and they deserve to be acknowledged. But they don’t have to define us, nor do we have to live unconsciously according to them. With awareness, we create a little space between ourselves and our experience. And in that space, we gain something incredibly valuable: the freedom to respond with more flexibility, compassion, and measured choice.

This renewed insight reassured me that teaching from a place of trial and error and on the ground lived experience, is exactly as it should be. Yes, these practices have indeed given me something profoundly valuable, even if my own expectations, or those of others, sometimes suggest otherwise. Disappointing to some but I do not in fact now walk around like a peaceful monk with all the answers to life. Yet my life does feel incredibly more rich.

If you, too, are looking for a way to live with more depth, meaning, and compassion where there is more space between the inevitable myriad of emotions and a steadier, more balanced perspective for yourself, then I invite you to join a beginner’s meditation course. I won’t just teach you how to sit in a meditation practice, we will also explore the science behind why meditation actually works and I will help you work out how to build meditation into your daily life and how to make it a consistent practice that enriches your life and those of others.

Focus Is a Skill You Build

I have been thinking a lot recently about how we develop skills in life and I started to think about attention and focus and the fact that attention and focus develop the same way any skill does — through steady, repeated practice, not instinct or willpower alone.

Focus takes practice, like anything else

Whatever you do for hours a day, day after day, you get good at. Most people have never deliberately practiced concentration — but many of us unknowingly practice distraction for hours daily, drawn along by phones and apps built to fragment attention. Run that pattern for a year and it’s no surprise concentration feels hard afterward: it’s simply the less-practiced skill!

The same law works in reverse. Just as a musician builds technique through repetition, focus builds through repeated, deliberate practice — the same principle behind sitting for meditation every day, even when a single sit doesn’t feel very transformative!!

Where you put your attention

One helpful way to picture this: think of the mind as a space with many different areas — worry,

happiness, creativity, and so on — and your attention as something that can be directed to any one of

them. You can choose where it goes, or let notifications and other people choose for you.

Whichever area you keep returning your attention to is the one that gets stronger. This is really just

another way of describing what meditation practice trains directly: the ability to notice where attention

has gone, and gently bring it back.

A simple step-by-step to practice

1. Pick one point of focus — your breath, a candle flame, or a single object — to rest your attention on.

2. Set a short timer to start. One or two minutes is plenty at first.

3. Rest your attention there and simply notice, without judgment, the moment it wanders off.

4. The instant you notice the wandering, gently bring your attention back to your chosen point.

5. Repeat. Each notice-and-return is the actual repetition being trained — it isn’t a failure, it’s the exercise.

6. As sessions feel steadier, add a minute or two rather than jumping straight to long stretches.

Divided attention and anxiety

When attention keeps bouncing between unfinished tasks, each interruption leaves a small unresolved thread. Left unattended, these accumulate over a day into a background hum of anxiety. Holding attention steady on one thing, even briefly, is what interrupts that build-up. Presence isn’t something to chase directly — it shows up as a natural result of practicing steadier attention.

How your meditation practice already builds this

Every time you sit for meditation, your attention settles onto the mantra, and at some point it drifts onto a thought, a plan, a worry. The moment you notice the drift and return to the mantra is the exact repetition described above — notice, then return — except it happens effortlessly, without willpower, dozens of times in a single sit. This is one reason regular meditation trains attention more efficiently than trying to concentrate through sheer force: the returning happens on its own, so it can repeat far more often without triggering the resistance that forced concentration usually brings on.

There’s a second effect. The deep rest gained during meditation allows the nervous system to release some of the accumulated stress that makes attention harder to hold onto in daily life. As that stress eases over weeks of regular practice, students often notice they're pulled off task less easily even outside of meditation — not because they’re trying harder, but because there’s less internal noise competing for their attention in the first place.

Bringing this into your practice

The larger point for students: focus isn’t a fixed trait some people have and others don’t. It’s a skill, built the same way any skill is — slowly, through consistent repetition, with setbacks along the way. Where has your attention been practicing today — and where would you like to strengthen it instead?

Note: Informed by teachings on focus and attention from Hindu priest and former monk Dandapani (Know Thyself podcast, TEDx talk Unwavering Focus, and The Power of Unwavering Focus).